Ass Backwards

Save the Words is a website from the makers of the Oxford English Dictionary, dedicated to saving underused words from extinction: words such as graviloquence and pigritude and squiriferous, that you are encouraged to adopt and re-introduce to the English language. As the examples I've cited illustrate,  there's a preponderance of leaden, faux-literate words here - these are the lumbering tuataras of the linguistic world, and I, for one, would rather see them waddle into oblivion. I think someone should instead make an effort to rescue certain racy Indian terms that have fallen into disuse. I'd like to make a start on the project by nominating a colourful expression I found recently in Joseph Thompson's A dictionary of Oordoo and English. Here's the entry from the dictionary, courtesy Google Books:

Gand ghalat (literally, 'ass-wrong') is the word here, defined as 'dead stupid' (the comma in the excerpt above has to be an error). Several other dictionaries from the nineteenth century present gand ghalat as a synonym for being out of one's wits, fuddled, or dead-drunk. The latter meaning can be found in John Gilchrist's Hindee moral preceptor, published in 1821, and Duncan Forbes' A dictionary, Hindustani and English.

Given its ubiquity in colonial-era dictionaries, gand ghalat must have been a very useful expression for the British in India. When I first encountered the term, I imagined red-faced Tommies and irate mofussil officials (or should that be mofussials?) muttering it under their breath as they contended with the baffling, plain-ass ghalat realities of an alien land.  But maybe I was dead wrong in picturing mad dogs and Englishmen sweltering in the mid-day sun, and the expression is meant to be used in more pleasant circumstances. Maybe it describes how you end up when the booze addles your brains to the point where you can't stand straight, and you topple over to land on your sorry ass. There you are in the gutter, gand ghalat.

A packet of Aishwarya

The Hindustan Times provides useful tips for the party season:

"A packet of Aishwarya.” That’s what a gram of cocaine is being called by those looking for a stash for their New Year parties. The code words don’t end there. Suppliers are calling hashish ‘Katrina’, while ketamine hydrochloride has been codenamed ‘Rakhi’. Buyers and sellers of narcotics, known to troll the city’s party spots every New Year’s Eve, are using these code words to stay under the police radar.

..It’s not just popular actors’ names that are being used. A drug party is being called a baithak (meeting), while a rave party is being called “420”. Cocaine is also being called ‘coco cola’, ‘cola’ and ‘white’; hashish has been nicknamed goli (tablet) or ‘black’.If, at a pub, someone asks for a ‘tissue’ he or she is likely to be seeking LSD, a hallucinogen. Heroin is being sold as ‘brown’.

Even party spots have been given code names. The invitation to a rave party at Madh Island would simply ask you to come to ‘midland’, while it would be ‘garden’ for Gorai. Ghodbunder Road in Thane has been named ‘Kalaghoda’ and Yeoor ‘jungle’. ‘Sea face’, meanwhile, is the code word for Goa.

(Narco cops on ‘Rakhi’, ‘Aishwarya’ trail, Hindustan Times, 31 Dec 2010)

Dhinchak

Anubha Sawhney Joshi defines the quintessential bling word in this ode to upward mobility in Delhi:

Your friends from South Delhi (GK-sheekay, Jorbagh-shorbagh) might use it as a jibe to describe your taste in clothes (fake brands, blingy handbags, nail jewellery), food (naan chholey, butter chicken, kulfi) or music (Punjabiyaan da tashan is probably your ringtone), but you brush it all aside with a casual: Ainvayi bolte rehte hain,saanu ki? You don't really give a damn because you're dhinchak and proudly so!

..Dhinchak is an attitude. It's what makes the kudi from Janakpuri who aspires to be in South Delhi actually get to Sainik Farms. Dhinchak is in the tinkle of the glass bangles and the sparkle of the bindi that she effortlessly teams with bootcut jeans to get noticed. Dhinchak is that quintessential free-spiritedness that makes a Janakpuri ki ladki smile and bullshit her way out of a sticky situation (Sorry, Auntyji, I can't marry your son because he's never going to get me out of this locality! But my cousin Rinkie from Rohtak will suit him perfectly). Dhinchak is her overconfidence as she misspells and mispronounces words, but doesnt stop using them. (I love romantic joner movies like DDLJ). Dhinchak is never a size zero because she wont ever give up on that spot of butter on her aloo ka parantha or fail to gobble the last garma-garam gulab jamun. Dhinchak will always be slightly conscious of her surroundings and her short skirt when she goes to celebrate her anniversary (not birthday) at The Oberoi (in South Delhi,of course), a once-in-a-year affair that will be duly documented on Facebook, except that she will call it Oberois.

(Confessions of a Dhinchak Ladki, Times of India, 20 Dec 2010)

Death of a Creole

Linguist Hugo Cardoso on the last speaker of a unique language formed through contact between Malayalam and Portuguese (OPEN Magazine, October 2010).

William Rozario passed away on 20 August 2010, at the age of 87. And with him died the Indo-Portuguese Creole of Cochin.

Undercover in India

'A commendable hot-chase, 007! But it was wasted as we lost the film!'

James Bond, licensed to mutilate the English language. Weird Crime Theater's post “Let me taste fish” and the Magic of Amar Chitra Katha has more.

From Where to Where

Anuvab Pal compiles a few current Indian English expressions (Mid-Day, August 1, 2010):

Rajeev this side: Usually said on the phone. It literally means the person saying it is on that side, physically. It has nothing to do with taking a side (for that, see stance (n)). Sometimes, it is said in person, across a table, implying the same thing. It can get awkward because you're not sure if you have to acknowledge your side too.

From where to where he's gone: Meaning success. It never implies anyone physically going anywhere. It's our way of talking about becoming something in life. Also, sometimes substituted with 'He's become a big man' which is also never a reference to size.

It's coming up like anything: Meaning development. Usually in reference to neighbourhoods westernising. Can also be used with individuals in show business and used as a substitute for 'appear' (Eg: You came in that ad, He came in that movie etc.)

Continental Food: Nobody on this or any other continent, knows what this means. It's any dish that has no defined national roots and if the chef does not feel like finding out (see also sizzler, (n) which doesn't mean anything)."

A dowry of parney

Just figured out that Google Books allows you to clip and embed passages from out-of-print books. Here's a curious piece of Anglo-Indian slang I found in A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant and Vulgar Words (1860) by John Camden Hotten:



Click on the image if it doesn't show up complete in your browser, that'll take you to the page on Google Books.

Mosambi/mozambique

Via मराठी शब्द, this plausible explanation for the origin of the word mosambi, from Firminger's Manual Of Gardening For India:

..a tight-skinned Orange of the Malta type, called the Mosambi (a corruption of Mozambique). This is generally called the Sweet Lime by Europeans.

On Indian English

Via Mint: Sailaja Pingali, author of Indian English (Dialects of English) on the characteristics of Indian English. (Download the podcast here).

Bookie jargon

Some notes on betting jargon, just in time for the IPL season. These are compiled from stray mentions in newspaper articles - if you can add to this list, or suggest a comprehensive guide, let me know.

Sauda: A bet

Sauda fok: Stop payment. When underworld dons suspect that a match has been fixed without their knowledge, they order a 'sauda fok', cancelling all payments.

Fancy sauda: I found this term on Cricinfo which provides the following explanation.

Some bookies and very big punters bet huge amounts between themselves on what is called 'fancy sauda'. This can be on anything, from estimating innings scores, top scorers or wicket-takers and staking from Rs 100-10,000 per run against the difference in team totals. It can take in small details, such as who will bowl the next over from which end and how many runs will be scored in an over, or off the next delivery. Putting a realistic figure on these transactions is difficult and though there are very few punters involved in this, the stakes can often be very high.

Dabba sauda: appears to be something similar, going by this quote from LiveMint:

The bookies have already started accepting interesting bets, called dabba sauda. These include bets on the political fortunes of BJP rebels and the survival of former chief minister Keshubhai Patel, who has made his dislike for Modi’s style of running things in Gujarat clear.

English is now India's second language

The Times of India summarizes recently released census data on bilingualism in India.

More Indians speak English than any other language, with the sole exception of Hindi. What's more, English speakers in India outnumber those in all of western Europe, not counting the United Kingdom. And Indian English-speakers are more than twice the UK's population.

English was the primary language for barely 2.3 lakh Indians at the time of the census, more than 86 million listed it as their second language and another 39 million as their third language. This puts the number of English speakers in India at the time to more than 125 million. The only language that had more speakers was Hindi with 551.4 million.

Slang Sighting: Zero

Mumbai underworld slang for a police informer, also known as a khabri or 'goodman'.

The code name Zero refers to an informer in Dawood Ibrahim's stronghold Dongri and adjoining areas. Goodman is another popular name for an informer. When someone praises an informer, calling him a 'goodman', in typical Indian gesturing, he touches his thumb to his coiled index finger making it look like a zero.

This is from a new series on Mumbai's underworld in Mid-Day, which also mentions that 'cutting' is police slang for an informer's tip-offs.

He was not aware of their whereabouts, when a khabri gave him a 'cutting' that they were in J J Hospital ward number 18. (Kingpin Khabri: Goss from Mumbai's underbelly, Sunday Mid-Day, 28 Feb 2010)

Cycle gap

Observe a traffic jam on an Indian street, and you will find that it tends to follow a complex process of re-alignment over time. It all begins with vehicles lined up bumper-to-bumper. But as the minutes tick away and more and more vehicles enter the jam, impatience mounts and many drivers try to switch lanes to gain an advantage. Others drift lazily towards visible openings, having nothing better to do, and soon all the cars, buses, trucks and auto-rickshaws have interlocked themselves into a complex jigsaw, which will take hours to disassemble. You may think that the gridlock is now complete, but believe it or not, there is still some room left for new entrants. At this point, you will find cyclists blithely weaving their way through the narrow gaps between vehicles to move to the head of the queue.

The second gear is down and as you negotiate a pothole, a grand convoy of three bikes try to slip in on the left. There is just daylight between the car and the parked SUV. It’s whats popularly known as cycle gap. (Confessions of a Magnificent Mind)

(Auto rickshaws) run on three wheels and an engine that is mostly used for mowing lawns in the western countries. Other characteristics are they have a very small turn radius and can be turned in circles at the same spot. They are also known for pugunthufying (entering) and going within a cycle gap (A Gap just as wide to let a Bike Go). (Indian Cities and Riders of the Auto Rickshaw « 18,000 RPM)

'Cycle gap' provides a metaphor in South Indian English for an indigenous brand of opportunism. Where others may give up, a certain type of individual will discover a narrow window of opportunity and try to squeeze through. If he succeeds, chances are he'll also try to pull in all his friends, brothers, parents, uncles and what-have-you after him, and a mad scramble will result, till someone notices and slams the window shut. Hence, the local Chennai idiom, 'to try and squeeze an auto-rickshaw through a cycle gap'.

In Chennai I had the pleasure of taking the auto ride and I was reminded of a local saying "people drive auto in a cycle gap", no, no, now even a bus goes in a cycle gap! (Rattling Communicator)

Red lights and no-entry signs are just meant for learning boards in driving schools, as the popular saying goes we’d even fit an armoured tank in a cycle gap! (Dappan Koothu)

Wikipedia provides a brief (and rather inadequate) definition of this sense of 'cycle gap':

Cycle Gap: Tamil for trying to get things done without anyone noticing it. (Wikipedia page on Madras Tamil)

The following examples illustrate the figurative sense of the term:

See, we are a cycle gap country. If judgements and policies are not watertight and leave a crack in the door for exceptional cases. We will attempt to drive a 18 wheeler through that gap. (Reality Check India)

My cousin was here last week, looking to sneak through the proverbial “cycle-gap” in the hallowed doors of TCS, CTS, Wipro, Satyam and Infosys which would make her the financially pampered, mentally tortured, socially showcased, BIG 5 IT professional. (ExpertDabbler)

Gun Throat

Another example of eccentric South Indian English, this one found in Green Well Years, an autobigraphical novel by the artist Manohar Devadoss about growing up in Madurai.

She had a 'gun-throat' and explained to the doctor her 'menses problems' in a voice so loud that the entire household came to know what they were.

If you want to insult a blowhard, call him a beerangi vaya, or 'cannon mouth' in colloquial Tamil. Gun throat is a less pejorative term that describes someone with a loud, thundering voice.

I insist that you switch off your mobile phone. Never will I forget the lowlife who answered a string of business calls throughout The Fellowship of the Rings in a gun-throat voice. (C. K. Meena, The Rules of Movie-Going, The Hindu, May 15 2003)

...my bladder decides to speak up. And not in little whispers either. Nope, this is a gun throat variety of bladder. It screams so loud that you have answer the call immediately or risk some embarrassing one year old suited behaviour. (life through pink colour glasses, November 21 2005)

I have been lucky, I have what people call a ‘Gun Throat’. As soon as I thunder into the microphone, the audience has no chance but to listen! (Shaly Pereira, Look Who's Talking, Mangalorean.com, September 20 2005)

Rajapart

Rajapart is a piece of Tamil theatre jargon from the 1930s, referring to the lead role in a play. The word mixes Tamil and English: rajapart is the 'king's part', the hero's role in costume dramas staged by the travelling theatre troupes of the time. I found the term in the autobiography of Sivaji Ganesan, the legendary Tamil actor who started out in one such 'boys' company' during this period, and also appeared in a film titled Rajapart Rangadurai later in his career.

In the theatre jargon of those days, I wanted to play Rajapart which was the role of a King. I appealed to my teacher demonstrating to him my prowess at playing this role. Gradually the number of female roles that came to me lessened and I was given male roles, and finally, I reached the status of a Rajapart actor. I was considered one of the most important actors in the troupe. (Sivaji Ganesan, Autobiography of an Actor, ed. by T. S. Narayana Swamy. Translated English edition, Chennai 2007)

Elsewhere in the text, Ganesan introduces the following terms, which illustrate the eccentric manner in which Tamil speakers tend to adopt English words.

Iron Streepart means a very important female part and similarly Iron Rajapart means a very important male role.

Why iron? I've been scratching my head, but the best I've got is this equation: iron=something strong=something very important. Maybe someone out there has a better explanation?

Convent/convented/convent english

Convent, n. In north India, a generic term for an English-medium school, usually a girls' school. The usage derives from the fact that schools run by missionaries were the first to use English as a medium of instruction, and they are still considered by many to be superior in this respect. A convent education is a status symbol, something that improves a girl's chances on the marriage market. Hence, convented, an adjective for someone who has studied at an English-medium school, found frequently in Indian matrimonial advertisements. (A Google search should turn up several ads seeking matches for 'beautiful Brahmin convented girls' - there is, of course, no such thing as a Brahmin convent). Convent English describes the affected manner of speech adopted by the 'convented', replete with schoolgirl slang and anglicizations of Indian words.

In modern India, where children were bought and sold for marriage through the newspaper, a girl's chance of a wealthy match improved sharply if she had been to a convent. The scramble gave a new word to the language. A matrimonial ad in the Sunday papers, after describing the bride-to-be as very fair, beautiful and homely (meaning house-trained), clinched the business with convented. Naturally, convents multiplied across the country, most without the trace of a nun, and one of them named, memorably, BLONDIE CONVENT (I. Allan Sealy, Trotternama)

It’s one of the most fabled lines in LSR history, passed down from batch to batch and teacher to student. The matrimonial ads, which after asking for a ‘homely, convented girl’ state categorically and firmly: LSR girls need not apply. That line has been quoted with pride by several women, glorying in the fact that their minds are considered too unconventional to fit in with the typical Indian bride mentality. (Article about Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi in the Indian Express, November 12, 2005)

Now we all know, in most parts of our country, particularly the north, a “convent” is just a general way to describe an English-medium school. In Punjab, you can often find a St Kabir Convent, a Guru Gobind Singh Convent, or some place else, a Maharishi Dayanand Convent. But a Lohia Convent? You name an English-medium school after a man who dedicated his life to throwing English-medium schooling, an instrument of colonialism, out of this country? And you do it in the heart of Lohia-land? (Shekhar Gupta, Indian Express, May 15, 2009)

We are against foreign missionaries but we open money-minting schools with such names as St. John Convent and even Durga Charan Convent. A few years ago a young lady gravely said to my late aunt Hamida Begum, "You have such a large house lying vacant in the country. Why don't you open St. Hamida Convent in it?" (Qurratulain Hyder,'Ignorance is not bliss', The Times of India Sunday Review, July 6 1997)

After Ayaram

The Indian Express compiles a lexicon of political jargon for this year's Indian general election. Excerpts:

108 kuien kuien kuien: A phrase popularised by Chief Minister YSR Reddy to remind people of his Rajiv Gandhi Arogyasri Scheme, which involves participation by private sector hospitals to bring medical care to the poor. The numbers 108 and 104 (for cities and rural areas) are what you need to dial for an ambulance which carts the patient to the nearest hospital. The ‘kuein kuein kuein’ was used effectively by YSR to mimic the siren.

Ruler: When Punjab politicians say ‘ruler’, what they mean is ‘rural’. Call it a Freudian slip or a malapropism, but most of the prominent leaders of the state, including the chief minister, say: “Aaj ruler areas vich rally haigi (today there is a rally in rural areas).” The word has caught on: people in these ‘ruler areas’ think ‘ruler’ means village.

Cover: This elections, ‘cover’ means a variety of gifts distributed to voters either early in the morning or late in the night—when it’s safe from election observers and rival party cadres. The word was coloured to mean bribe after voters in some areas received crisp Rs 500 notes recently. Even when the gift becomes saris or tokens for liquor, the question now is: “Did you get the cover?”

Mahal factor: The phrase is often used to underline the importance of the Scindia family in the electoral politics of the Gwalior-Guna-Shivpuri region. When a representative of the erstwhile royal family is contesting, the mahal (palace) factor comes into play directly. When a Scindia is not in the fray, a representative backed by the family, irrespective of the political divide, is believed to benefit from the M factor.

Yeddy-Reddy-Cheddy: This is a reference to the power triumvirate within the BJP in Karnataka—Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, the Reddys (mining barons from Bellary) and the khaki shorts (cheddy or chaddi) of the RSS. The phrase emerged in the opposition Congress camp and was used by former chief minister S. Bangarappa (now in the Congress) in the course of his electoral battle with Yeddyurappa’s son B.Y. Raghavendra.

India's Endangered Languages

196 Indian languages are in danger of extinction, according to UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing. Ahom, Aimol, Andro, Chairel, Kolhreng, Rangkas, Sengmai, Tarao, Tolcha are some the languages that are already extinct, according to a report in Outlook, which also provides a map showing the regional distribution of the threatened languages. Essentially, they are clustered on the margins of the Hindi heartland - the mountain regions where Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken,the tribal regions of central and south India, the North-East and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. You can find another report here, and the Atlas itself is available online here.

Bangalore Banter

Bengalooru Banter is a blog that provides samples of Bean Town bakwas, like these overheard conversations or this list of Kanglish (Kannada + English) slang. A few examples from Bikerdude's slang dictionary:

AJM: Short for Akkan Jusht Missu (Lit: Elder Sister just missed) 1. Minor disappointment 2. Narrow escape. "Aye ticket siktheno?" "Illa lo, AJM agoythu." Do not use in polite company!

Budding: Short for Brigade road Up and Down. bangalore's most popular pastime. (Also Mudding - MG road Up and Down)

Free kotre phenoylu kudithaane : Lit: If its free, he'll even drink phenyl. Curmudgeon, compulsively economical person.

Meetru : Lit: (autorickshaw) Meter. Gumption/cheek. "Yeno, eshto ning meetru?"

Mishtik : Lit: Mistake. Used for errors, leave, illnesses, sudden departures, misunderstandings, deletions, etc.

Raiyya: From the English "Right" (used by bus conductors after passengers have got off or on at a bus stop). To leave/depart. "Boss picture mugdid takshna naan mane tava raiyya."

Simp-simply : Translated from the kannada sum-sumne. For no reason at all. "Aye don’t simp-simply come and dishtrub me I say."

Further linguistic confusion in this post which reproduces a conversation in the hybrid 'Kan-Tam' (Kannadized Tamil)spoken in the city's Malleswaram area. Dig in.

Indian English: Language & Culture

Indian English: Language & Culture is a Lonely Planet guide to the quirks of English as spoken in India. Essential if you're a visitor mystified by travel agents who want to 'prepone' your ticket: I'm less certain that a phrasebook of this kind can help anyone decipher a conversation in Hinglish, or even your average Mumbai tabloid. Worth a look, nevertheless. (I should add here that I served as a consultant on this project - my contribution, however, was limited to pointing out some obvious errors and suggesting a few sample phrases).

Indian English Illustrated

Ingenious. Memsaab Story presents Indianisms like 'tight slap', 'shoe-bite' and many more in grabs from sub-titled Bollywood flicks.

Brag-rapping, Hyderabad style

Khallas

A new book on the jargon of bhai-land:

It is a world where anaar (pomegranate) is a grenade, “artist” a shooter, atthais (28) an alcoholic, baja (musical instrument) a handgun, blue a Rs. 100 note, “camera” a weapon, “capsule” a bullet, chabbis (26) a young promiscuous girl, “Clinton” fake American dollar bills, “Delhi” is Dubai, “Indian bat” a country-made revolver, jhadu (broom) is an assault weapon, “Kanpur” is Karachi…

The Hindustan Times has an extract here. The author is a well-known crime reporter who's covered Mumbai's crime beat for the Indian Express and the Hindustan Times, so I guess he knows what he's talking about when he tracks the origin of underworld slang terms to specific gangs:

Dana Live rounds, a relatively old term, can be traced back to Dawood and the early 1980s.
Item Sexy damsel. Originally coined for Meenakshi Sharma, who wanted to join Bollywood but ended up as a key operative in Babloo Shrivastava's gang.
Zero dial The informer, as he was known in Dawood's stronghold Dongri, in South Mumbai.

The extract features a few slang words new to me:

Gaddi (Train) The position of practising sodomy inside a crammed jail.
Lift-wali building 9 mm Caliber Semi-automatic Star Pistol. So called because bullets are pushed upwards by a spring in an automatic pistol, just like an elevator.
Roti A term used by intelligence officials to denote compact discs (CDs), which are often dispatched through couriers

Dress dada

A dress dada is not a preening street goon or a transvestite toughie, it's a respectful Bollywood term for a senior dressman. 'Dada' here is the Marathi word for 'elder brother' and is used liberally on Bollywood sets, as explained in this posting to Sarai:

As I learnt early on, a production unit has certain unwritten codes such as an established system of address. Everyone calls everyone else 'xyz-ji'. This old-world form of 'respectful' address has found much favour in the film industry. It actually helps maintain a certain amount of professional distance and creates an atmosphere where the very politeness of the form of address disallows (to some extent) ugly exchanges. Representatives of departments like make-up and dress are called Make-up dada and Dress dada respectively. The guys in charge of properties (art direction) are clubbed together as Setting dada. (Debashree Mukherjee, 'Making Of Johny Johny, Yes Papa', Sarai)

With folded hands

Jug Suraiya discusses the anatomical impossibility of this Indian English phrase:

A couple of columns ago I used the typically Indian phrase 'with folded hands', a gesture implying, among many other things, entreaty or surrender. A reader has pointed out that while the phrase is, indeed, in common use, it represents an anatomical impossibility much more so than that suggested by the other choice Indian Englishism: my head is eating circles (a direct translation from the Hindustani 'Mera sir chakkar kha raha hai').

Automatic Hinglish

Google Translate now offers translation from English to Hindi and vice versa. Type in some text and check out the results. Chances are you'll get some garbled nonsense, but with computer-generated translation, that's par for the course. What's surprising is that if you translate from English to Hindi and convert the results back to English, some of the original text is restored. Here's a portion of Hamlet's soliloquy in Google Hindi:

' Tis एक consummation
श्रद्धापूर्वक को wish'd. करने के लिए मौत की नींद के लिए.
नींद के स्वप्न को perchance करने के लिए: सॉफ्टवेयर, यही तो कठिनाई है!

That's completely meaningless, of course. But feed this drivel to the Google translator, and it becomes Shakespeare again - with a few improvements.

'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to wish'd. To death for sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream: software, there's the rub!

Software, there's the rub: truer words have never been spoken. Coming up: Surdas in Hinglish ('Surdas, Braja is very bad now, kahe not let ubare') and Google's take on hip-hop lyrics, which is so polite, you'll never feel the need for a Parental Advisory ('Shake your booty' translates as 'Hilayein apni loot').

The Elvis of English

This is off-topic somewhat, but I can't resist linking to this great New Yorker piece on China's 'Elvis of English'. Li Yang, founder and chief teacher at Li Yang Crazy English, trains Chinese tongue muscles with an ESL technique that has been described as 'English as a Shouted Language'. Rapidex, Chinese style:

Li stood before the students, his right arm raised in the manner of a tent revivalist, and launched them into English at the top of their lungs. “I!” he thundered. “I!” they thundered back.
“Would!”
“Would!”
“Like!”
“Like!”
“To!”
“To!”
“Take!”
“Take!”
“Your!”
“Your!”
“Tem! Per! Ture!”
“Tem! Per! Ture!”
One by one, the doctors tried it out. “I would like to take your temperature!” a woman in stylish black glasses yelled, followed by a man in a military uniform. As Li went around the room, each voice sounded a bit more confident than the one before. (How a patient might react to such bluster was anyone’s guess.)

Chak De Again

Think I'll take Sidhu's word for it (in this case, he may actually know what he's talking about):

The intricate meaning of the word is Chak De Phatte, Nap De Killi. Killi is a small lever that you pull. And when you pull it, the water starts gushing into the fields through a motor. Now that Killi is always invariably hidden under a well. And that well is covered by wooden planks. So you lift the phatta, i.e. Chak De Phatta, and then you pull the killi. And then the water starts flowing, gushing into the fields. So it's got everything to do with positivity,' said Navjot Singh Sidhu, former Indian cricket player.

Chak de phatte

Turn on the car radio, and chances are a bhangra number will come on soon enough, urging you to 'chak de phatte'. All very good and rousing, but uhm, what is one supposed to do beyond the usual one-legged hop with fingers pointing heavenwards (whiskey glass balanced on head, optional)? I know what the phrase means literally, something like 'lift up the planks' in Punjabi, but how exactly does one chak the said phattas? And what is the true origin of this now ubiquitous Punjabi slang phrase? I googled around a bit and found quite a few explanations, most of them spurious no doubt. Here are the more plausible origins, this first one from the Urban Dictionary :

Chak De Phatte -though loosely translated as pick up the floorboards is more of a war cry than a housekeeping call. The origins of the phrase lie in the times when the Khalsa i.e. the original warrior Sikhs were formed, they would cross canals and attack Mughal camps in a blitzkrieg attack and then just as they came would retreat leaving the enemy helpless. The sport of tent pegging also evolved from this camp raiding where the riders would remove the pegs of the tents trapping the occupants under, what then used to be a very heavy fabric. While escaping back to their base the Khalsa warriors would dismantle any temporary bridges constructed by them(made out of 'Phatte') to prevent the Mughals from chasing them and sometimes to prevent the enemy from escaping, hence the cry 'Chak De Phatte'. The phrase then acquired the meaning: to complete the route. And is now used as in the figure of 'Bring the house down!'.

And here's another plausible explanation, found in a comment posted by Subrat to a review of the movie Chak De at Water, No Ice:

Chak De comes from Chak De Phatte. While the term loosely does mean ‘come on’ or ‘go for it’ (obvious from its usage), it traces its origins to the farms of Punjab. The motor which pumps water into the fields is normally underground and is covered with wooden planks (called phatte in Punjabi). When you want to turn on the motor, you were asked to ‘chak de phatte’ which meant turn the planks over. It was a sort of clarion call to get down to business. The term that followed this was ‘Nap de Killi’ which meant turn on the tap. Hence, these two terms are used together - “chak de phatte, nap de killi”. So there ends my small dissertation on Punjabi folklore (must admit I have never been to the fields of Punjab to hear this).

And a third, which attributes the origin to bhangra bands in the UK:

‘Phatte’ is also synonymous with wooden floor boards. So when desi bands in the UK needed a cool phrase to hook their music (bhangra) on, they used a literal translation of ‘beat up the floor boards’ or chak de phatte.

Prince kisses chuddies

Via Yahoo News:

Extolling what he called the 'splendidly unstoppable' South Asian contributions in Britain, Prince Charles, the heir apparent to the British crown, told a dinner thrown for 200 Asian guests at Windsor Castle that the word 'chuddie' - Punjabi word for underwear - is here to stay in the English language.

'I must say I am constantly struck by the fact the Britons of every origin in fact share more in common than they think,' Charles said in his speech to the celebrity guests at the gala dinner. 'The sharing of language is a further case in point. The most well-known examples are probably 'bungalow', 'verandah' and, indeed, 'shampoo'. And more recently, 'chuddies' seemed to have crept into the English language - if that is the correct way to put it,' he told guests who included actor-couple Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal, cricketer Saj Mahmood, author Vikram Seth and actor Art Malik.

A day after Hindus anointed Prime Minister Gordon Brown as Govardhan Brown on Diwali at the House of Commons, Charles' mention of 'chuddies' at Windsor Castle - his mother Elizabeth II's 900-year-old official residence - risked lowering the tone of celebrations a bit. But it was an occasion for humour and the British royal made his risque reference fully aware that it was Bhaskar and Syal, the creators of the BBC comedy series Goodness Gracious Me, who first put the word 'chuddie' in the lexicon of the evolving English language. The word became famous after Bhaskar and Syal coined the phrase 'kiss my chuddies' in their serial. And in 2005, it was officially entered into the Collins English Dictionary.

All About G.V. Desani

A comprehensive site dedicated to the author of All About H. Hatterr. The links under 'Talking Points' will lead you to some interesting articles, including a brief note on a theatrical adaptation of Desani's comic masterpiece titled 'Damme, This is the Oriental Scene for You!'

Twisted Tongues

Ketan Tanna reports on the current trend of 'accent neutralization' ( Freedom from mother tongue, The Times of India, 30 September 2007):

Most Indians speak English with the peculiar sounds of their mother tongues. 'When' often sounds like 'ven' and 'vine' becomes 'wine'. We also tend to speak fast without stretching the vowel sounds. In Orissa and other parts of eastern India, b is freely used for w and v, while across the South, prize sounds like price, and rise sounds like rice. Gujaratis and Rajasthanis make 'wis' out of wish and their 'shirts' are 'sirts'. And a marriage hall is, poignantly or prophetically, "marriage hole". Maharashtrians threaten to become 'voilent' and not violent. And those from MP and UP have a perpetual problem with starting a word with 's' even if they have been to the 'eskool'. There is, however, a cure. And increasingly, Indians are seeking this cure.

In the last few years, it is not just BPO employees who have been learning to speak correctly but also scores of housewives businessmen, senior citizens, middle level executives and many more who cannot be described. They are taking the help of voice trainers to get rid of various flaws in how they speak English.

Meanwhile, there are those who feel that its time western executives learnt their way around Indian accents. Here's Razib Ahmed's 10 Reasons why you should learn an Indian Accent.

(via Many Englishes)

Gloriously Impure and Back in Print

The New York Review of Books will bring G V Desani's All About H Hatterr back into print this month. Please go out and get yourself a copy of this classic immediately. If you need a reason, read the reviews compiled here or this excerpt from Anthony Burgess' introduction:

..it is the language that makes the book, a sort of creative chaos that grumbles at the restraining banks. It is what may be termed Whole Language, in which philosophical terms, the colloquialisms of Calcutta and London, Shakespeareian archaisms, bazaar whinings, quack spiels, references to the Hindu pantheon, the jargon of Indian litigation, and shrill babu irritability seethe together. It is not pure English; it is, like the English of Shakespeare, Joyce and Kipling, gloriously impure.

Khaleeji Pidgin

Found on Chez Sinjab, this interesting blog post (Ma'alum, my friend?: The Grammarian's Guide to Khaleeji Pidgin) on the 'Indo-Anglo-Urdu-Arabic mix' spoken in the Gulf.

Of course, there are certain rules to Khaleeji pidgin.

First, certain words must be spoken in certain languages. Greetings, such as sala'am aleykum and sabah al kheir, are always in Arabic. How are you? is usually delievered in Arabic or Hindi. Iuwa, tamam, good, acha and, most importantly, ok are all acceptable ways of saying good. The phrase number one! must always be delivered in English, and with enthusiasm. My friend is perhaps the most popular English phrase, and is to be used liberally. No problem and mafi mushkala are both universally understood, but mafi mukh (no brain) must be spoken in Arabic. Throw in the occasional bas and khalas when ordering food or to show frustration. Then finished it all off with a masala'am for strangers or a yella, bye! for friends.

Another blogger describes the difficulties involved in mastering this mix:

..learning a 'standard' business English version and getting used to a few accents must be easier than learning the local Arabic mix here, which seems like the equivalent of having to master Biblical English, Shakespearian English, Indian English, Brummie, Geordie and a few others.

Lumberdar

शब्‍दों का सफ़र is Ajit Wadnerkar's excellent blog on Hindi word origins. Here's Ajit on the hybrid word lumberdar, formed from the English word ‘number’ with the Persian termination -dar. (For more on the word, see Hobson-Jobson ).

उत्तरभारत में इसे नंबरदार और लंबरदार दोनों तरीके से बोला जाता है। दरअसल इस नाम के पीछे अगर देखें तो प्राचीन भारत की संयुक्त परिवार प्रथा नज़र आती है। निकट संबंधियों के भरे पूरे परिवार की समृद्ध और समझदारी भरी परंपरा अंग्रेजों के शासन संभालने तक सांसे ले रही थी। यह परंपरा सामाजिक सुरक्षा के लिहाज से चाहे बढ़िया थी मगर कुटुम्ब की संयुक्त अधिकार वाली संपत्तियों , ज़मीनों आदि का हिसाब किताब बड़ा
पेचीदा काम था। खासतौर पर सरकार को जब लगान चुकाने की बात सामने आती थी तब इसकी मुश्किलें नज़र आती थीं। मगर सरकार को तो लगान वसूलना ही होता था सो एक व्यस्था बनाई गई जिसके मुताबिक संयुक्त परिवार के एक व्यक्ति विशेष को इस काम के लिए मुकर्रर कर दिया जाता था कि वह सरकारी शुल्क, लगान या अन्य दस्तावेजी कामों के लिए उत्तरदायी होगा। इस पूरी कार्रवाई का नंबर देखर रजिस्ट्रेशन होता था यानी वह व्यक्ति नंबर के ज़रिये रजिस्टर्ड होता इसलिए उसे नंबरदार कहा जाने लगा। वहीं व्यक्ति बाद में समूचे गांव से राजस्व वसूली के लिए भी प्रतिनिधि बनाया जाने लगा।

Entry From Backside

Entry from Backside Only: Hazaar Fundas of Indian-English is the title of a new book on Indian English by Binoo K. John.

Backsides have a frontal position in Indian-English. In cluttered, crowded alleys there can be seen the notice “Entry from backside”, a usage not exactly meant as a come-hither line to gays.

Haflong Hindi

The Indian Express reports on the pidgin Hindi that unites tribes living in the North Cachar Hills of Assam. ('In this Assam district, Hindi unites 11 tribes', Indian Express, 10 September, 2007).

“We call it Haflong Hindi,” said former Chairman of Haflong Town Committee Gopinath Gorlosa.

“A century ago, most of the 11 tribes living in the North Cachar Hills could hardly communicate with each other. Today, all of us have a common language, which we call Haflong Hindi,” Gorlosa said. While Gorlosa himself is a Dimasa, all other tribes—Hmar, Kuki, Zeme Naga, Biate, Vaiphei, Hrangkhol, Khelma, Rongmei, Karbi, Jaintiya—use Haflong Hindi to communicate with each other.

When a Dimasa tribal says, “Tumko mairong leke aaya”, one must understand that he means “I have brought some rice for you,” he explains. “Sometimes it is difficult to understand,” points out Anil Kumar Barua, Deputy Commissioner of the district. When one says, “Tum kutta hum khaya,” it means “Your dog has bitten me”. Or when someone says, “Hum agey girega,” it means “please drop me there.”

Brother Tongue

Ketan Tanna updates the underworld lexicon in the Times of India ('Bhais speak differently now', 9 Sep, 2007):

A crore, which the underworld famously called "khoka", is now "bada rupiya" while "peti" (one lakh) has become "chota rupiya". Encounter cop Sachin Vaze says that "supari" (contract killing), once the most feared word in the film and real estate circles, is today called "nariyal dena" as a tribute to the tradition of breaking a coconut to inaugurate a venture.

Needless to say, this is not a structured transformation. Old usages still linger but these new expressions are catching on. In the past, cops, especially the constable, were called "pandu" without affection. Later they were called "bidi", without affection, of course. But now they are called "badal". It's used as by gangsters as a warming to their men that the clouds have come and they should scoot.

AK-47 has become "Lambi" (referring to its length). Pistol is "Magazine" and bullets are "dane" (grains). A 6mm pistol is still called "chakri" and if one has to bring a 9mm variant then he is asked to bring "nine number ki chappal". An ordinary revolver is called file. Cash is still known as "kagaz" (paper) but now it is also called "patte" or "lottery" Gold which was called "pila" (yellow) is now also called "jaundice", according to the police, and silver is called "barf" (snow).

To eliminate a person, the underworld continues to use the "de de" (give it to him) or "baja de". But when a contract killing gets postponed, the term now used is "shaadi multavi ho gayi hai" (marriage has been postponed). When a gangster is on the run, he becomes "11 number ki bus" (11 refers to the two legs).

A police officer says that the foot soldiers of the underworld used to come from UP and Bihar and they had created the first lexicon. Now, with most gangs disbanded and the aura of the underworld decimated, even the literary talents of the mafia seem to have become diminished.

Slang Sighting: Bombay Docks

Slang term used on the Mumbai modelling circuit to describe someone with bad body odour.

"Mumbai lingo is a bit different. There’s a lot of Hindi slang and it’s mostly abusive, but used a lot in the modeling circuit. [A fairly common term here] is ‘bombay docks’, used when a girl has bad body odour." (Mumbai model Sahil Shroff quoted in The slang bang! by Reshma Arya, DNA, December 4, 2006)

English of India

An exhibition by Meena Kadri of the National Institute of Design, in collaboration with sign painter Yasin Chhipa. Catch it on Flickr. (For the ignorant, here's a basic definition of Roadside Romeo).

It's Hinglish, innit?

From BBC News:

Hinglish - a hybrid of English and south Asian languages, used both in Asia and the UK - now has its own dictionary.

A dictionary of the hybrid language has been gathered by Baljinder Mahal, a Derby-based teacher and published this week as The Queen's Hinglish.

Much of it comes from banter - the exchanges between the British white population and the Asians," she says.

"It's also sometimes a secret language, which is being used by lots of British Asians, but it's never been picked up on."

And in multi-cultural playgrounds, she now hears white pupils using Asian words, such as "kati", meaning "I'm not your friend any more". For the young are linguistic magpies, borrowing from any language, accent or dialect that seems fashionable.

Kati? That would be katti, I think, as in 'I'm katti with you' (cool title for Himesh Reshammiya's next doleful hit?)

Street Cricket

A glossary of street cricket terms from Wikipedia. This one's done the rounds as one of those annoying forwarded emails, but it's worth a read nevertheless. How else would you learn the meaning of this mysterious battle-cry?

Upeeeet (Up-it) Etymology partly English - When the batsman, usually the sothai hits the ball in the air, it is a common practice for all the fielders to scream Upeeet encouraging the fielder in the closest proximity to the ball to catch it.

Many of the terms listed are here originally from South India, so I'm not familiar with them. For example:

Gaaji Etymology English - Comes from 'Taking guard' - The Indian reference for an 'innings', usually for batting. It is a well known fact that captains of street cricket teams always prefer to bat first irrespective of conditions. A team batting is said to have had its 'gaaji' and a team which did not bat can get their 'gaaji' the next day

'Idea' Mani Etymology English. Mani refers to a common tamil name. - An intelligent player in the team who always comes up with ideas. Sometimes used in derogatory context to refer to someone who always comes up with ideas that won't materialize.

Street cricket always involves a great deal of improvisation. If you don't have the right equipment, or enough players, the rules of the game need to be adapted. That's how you land up with terms like these:

Automatic Wicketkeeper Etymology English - This indicates that a wicketkeeper is assumed to be standing behind the stumps. No person is placed in that position due to lack of fielders. If the batsman knicks the ball and it goes behind the stumps, he is out caught by the automatic wicketkeeper.

Double-side batsman Etymology English - When the total number of players is odd, one player is declared as Double-side batsman. Typically this person keeps the wicket and will not be allowed to bowl. Also known as inter-pinter.

And finally, do follow the links at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry, they'll lead you to some more glossaries.

Poi Bowling The hard-to-please Chennaiite’s description of the stuff dished out by most spin bowlers. Poi means a lie, and this term denotes lack of spin or fictitious spin. A variation is poi bowler. (V Ramnarayan, The romance of TN cricket, ChennaiOnline)

Baby Over A concept truly Indian. It was definitely invented by the strong guys of the team who realized that it was too expensive to allow a Chintu to bowl half-a-dozen balls which could prove fatal to the team. Hence, the Chintus bowled only 3 balls after which a Sameer or Jaspreet took over. No hard feelings. (Arvind Iyer, Iyer-archi's Blog)

Tapori Talk on Pak Radio

Mumbaiyya, the patois of Mumbai's streets is taking over the airwaves in Pakistan, reports Hasan Mansoor in Mid-Day ('Tapori India on Pak radio', Mid-Day, April 16, 2006).

Pakistani linguists have joined their Indian counterparts in lamenting the way Bambaiyya has defiled spoken language.

Panga lena (to invite trouble), phadda dalna (quarrel), jugar (doing something by any means), lash pash (fantastic), khancha (backdoor), lafra (quarrel), supari (commissioning a killer to kill someone), chief saab (the boss), and phrases like topi ghumana (to befool), meter ghoomna (become wild and violent), pinki hona (begrudged), hut jana (become violent and annoyed) — these are some of the words Pakistani youth are importing from India and popularising through radio and TV.

The article's worth a read, though I should point out that very few of the slang terms listed here are actual tapori talk. Chief saab is Pakistani slang, and so I suppose is pinki hona (no idea where that comes from, it sounds more P'njabi than Mumbaiyya).

Bitten by the Blurb

BollyWHAT? examines the fractured English of Indian DVD blurbs in a dissertation titled 'Bitten by the Blurb: The DVD Synopsis as Comedy Routine'. Very funny indeed, and I'm waiting for them to turn their attention to DVD subtitles. Meanwhile, here's the ingenious plot of a B-grade movie called Ek Aur Vishpot:

Hero of this film is honest muncipal commissioner, who is very strict about his rules & regulations. The villian belongs with the evil deeds. Their illegal construction are destroyed by our hero with the help of law & order. The villians plan in such a way our hero taken into the court. Court declares that our hero is pagal [mad] and taken to mental asylum.

In the mental asylum, he observed three characters (Anjan Srivastava, Kiran Kumar, Anees Khan) and escaped from the asylum. By mistake Asrani (Mad Doctor) joined in the mission, our hero uses all the four mads like weapon and all the mad characters kill one after another. If pagal kill a person, no punishment.

Finally hero again taken to court. Hero argued in the court:

1. If I am murderer, I could not be Pagal

2. But the same court given the judgement that I am a pagal

3. If I am a pagal I am not a murderer.

Judgement still awaited.

Complexion Coffee

I've heard of metre coffee, but what exactly is 'complexion coffee'? I came across this term in an Outlook review:

Coffee, a naturalised white man's drink, was introduced by the Portuguese, who also introduced the original version of the rasogolla. The natives, as the imperial mind put it, took to it with alacrity, abandoning their rice gruel for this bittersweet affair. Coffee was called complexion coffee in the family. It was something that the Brahmin mind needed with that other meticulous creation, The Hindu.

The book under review is In those days there was no coffee: Writings in Cultural History by A.R. Venkatachalapathy. It sounds interesting, and I'll surely read it one of these days, soon as I find a copy. But till then, any guesses?

The Below Statement

'The use of below in Indian English is well worth a study', writes K S Yadurajan in the Deccan Herald.

Several railway officers have assured me that a standard opening in railway official correspondence is: ‘Dear Sir, with reference to your above see my below’.

Below can be used as a adverb: go below the deck; we saw the blue waters spread below us. But in IE we see the use of below as an attributive modifier of a noun — the below statement.

More here.

Pirate Talk

Mid-Day ('Takla Hatela ya Lamba Khamba?', Mid-day, May 20, 2006) reports that the Mumbai underworld has coined new slang names for Bollywood actors and actresses. This list was extracted from a conversation between video pirates in Karachi and Mumbai, recorded by an anti-piracy cell.

The men

- Chyawanprash: Amitabh Bachchan (after the brand he endorses)
- Takla Hatela: Salman Khan (recently went bald)
- Jhakaas Mamu: Anil Kapoor
- Chikna Kaana: Saif Ali Khan
- Junior Daadhi: Abhishek Bachchan (thanks to his ever-present stubble)
- Booddha Hakla: Shah Rukh Khan
- Kavla hakla: Shahid Kapur (the aspiring SRK)
- Satkela AK-47 or Munnabhai: Sunjay Dutt
- Kala Ghoda: Ajay Devgan
- Charsi Punter: Fardeen Khan
- Chumma Jumma: Emraan Hashmi

The women

- Kajrawali: Aishwarya Rai
- Chhipkali: Urmila Matondkar
- Item bomb: Mallika Sherawat
- Boodhi Ghodi Lal Lagam: Rekha
- Carrom Board: Priyanka Chopra
- MMS item: Kareena Kapoor
- Shaani Batli: Rani Mukerji
- Lamba Khamba: Shilpa Shetty
- Khallaas Baby: Isha Koppikar
- Mota rola: Manisha Koirala

Been There. Done the Needful.

Got the T-shirt.

Your aunty is showing

First it was low-slung chaddi-revealing jeans. Now there's another mention of unmentionables in the current issue of Time Out Mumbai:

Cha-bra

A compound noun formed by joining the syllables cha and bra. Rhymes with sir. Shorthand for chaddi-bra, it's a Marathi synonym for lingerie.

Usage: Chee. All you see on page 3 is skinny models going to parties wearing only cha-bra.

Who writes this stuff anyway? Some Maharashtrian tai with an underwear fetish?

Sri Lankan English

The September 2005 issue of the OED Newsletter contains an article by Richard Boyle, one of the OED's consultants, which looks at the history of Sri Lankan English. A useful overview of the subject from the author of Knox's Words, a study of words of Sri Lankan origin recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Slang sighting: Dedhfutia

Dedfutia was the name of Sanjay Narvekar's character in Vaastav, the Mahesh Manjrekar film about Mumbai's underworld. The word is Marathi slang for a midget ('one-and-a-half-footer' is the literal translation) and is currently Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray's favoured epithet for State Revenue Minister Narayan Rane.

While addressing Sainiks from Rane's Sindhudurg district, Thackeray used what he proudly calls, Thackeri (street-language that is generally below the belt) and called Rane a variety of names. These included: bhadwa (pimp), dedhfutya (referring to his short stature), vasoolmantri (extortion minister), phurse (poisonous snake) and a mad dog. (Mid-Day, September 3, 2005)

Slang Sighting: Thumbs Up

Illiterate, uneducated. A reference to the Hindi idiom 'angootha chhaap', which describes illiterate individuals who place thumb impressions on documents in lieu of signatures.

"Most of these people including me are 'thumbs up' (uneducated)," said a 37-year-old Gujarati trader. (Hindustan Times, August 26, 2005)

Asian Voices in the UK

Voices is an ambitious BBC project that maps changes in regional accents and dialects in the UK. There's a wealth of material on the website, which includes over a thousand clips, links to many radio shows based on the BBC surveys, and a mini-site on the Asian Network, which deals with the languages of the Asian community. Here, you can contribute words to a Desi Dictionary or listen to Southall Punjabis talking about Pinglish, a cross between Punjabi and English. There's also a breakfast series called Out of English, which explores how Asian words are slipping into common English usage.

Elsewhere on the Voices site, there's an interesting article about the speech of the East End. I've written about Benglish earlier: the BBC's research shows that this dialect is replacing Cockney in parts of London.

Speaking in an interview for BBC Voices, Sue Fox, a socio-linguist at the Queen Mary College, University of London says that a new dialect is emerging to replace Cockney and that it's a mixture between English and Bangladeshi... Fox's findings are the result of her research into the way that Cockney is being influenced by the speech of Bangladeshi and other communities in Tower Hamlets. In the interview with the BBC Fox says: "This is very exciting for linguists - the language of London is changing. The majority of young people of school age are of Bangladeshi origin and this has had tremendous impact on the dialect spoken in the area.

"What I've actually found with the young people in Tower Hamlets is that they are using a variety of English which is not traditionally associated with cockney English - it's a variety that we might say is Bangladeshi-accented. And in turn what I've found is that some adolescents of white British origin are also using these features in their speech as well".

David Crystal sees this phenomenon repeating itself in cities across the UK, as foreign languages and regional dialects mix and influence each other:

For example, in Liverpool as well as the traditional Scouse accent you will hear distinct Caribbean-Scouse, African-Scouse as well as Indian-Scouse accents. In Cardiff I've heard a number of accent mixes that weren't previously heard before such as Cardiff-Arabic and Cardiff-Hindi. This pattern is repeating itself in many urban communities across the UK, people are especially keen to develop a strong sense of local identity.

Fascinating stuff. Unfortunately, there aren't any recordings of Cardiff Hindi or Indian Scouse on the site, though I did find this clip of Lancashire Urdu...

Two Tongues

I've been experimenting with Indic IMEs, software that allows you to use the English QWERT keyboard to enter text in Indian languages. I thought I'd try my hand at an unfamilar script, so I downloaded the Gujarati IME and typed up an excerpt from Sujata Bhatt's bilingual poem, 'Search For My Tongue', which mixes Gujarati lines with English transliterations. The task was surprisingly easy, though I must admit that the script isn't difficult to grasp if you're familiar with Devnagari. Anyway, here's the excerpt, which describes what it's like to have 'two tongues in your mouth'.

You ask me what I mean
by saying I have lost my tongue.
I ask you, what would you do
if you had two tongues in your mouth,
and lost the first one, the mother tongue,
and could not really know the other,
the foreign tongue.
You could not use them both together
even if you thought that way.
And if you lived in a place where you had to
speak a foreign tongue--
your mother tongue would rot,
rot and die in your mouth
until you had to spit it out.
I thought I spit it out
but overnight while I dream,

મને હુતું કે આબ્બી જીભ આબ્બી ભાષા
munay hutoo kay aakhee jeebh aakhee bhasha
મેં થૂંકી નાબી છે
may thoonky nakhi chay
પરંતુ રાત્રે સ્વપ્નાંમાં મારી ભાષા પાછી આવે છે
parantoo rattray svupnama mari bhasha pachi aavay chay
ફુલની જેમ મારી ભાષા મારી જીભ
foolnee jaim mari bhasha mari jeebh
મોઢામાં બીલે છે
moddhama kheelay chay
ફુલની જેમ મારી ભાષા મારી જીભ
fullnee jaim mari bhasha mari jeebh
મોઢામાં પાકે છે
moddhama pakay chay

it grows back, a stump of a shoot
grows longer, grows moist, grows strong veins,
it ties the other tongue in knots,
the bud opens, the bud opens in my mouth,
it pushes the other tongue aside.
Everytime I think I have forgotten,
I think I have lost the mother tongue,
it blossoms out of my mouth.

If you can't see the Gujarati text, here's some help. You may also need to download a Gujarati Unicode font.

Is your Hinglish up to speed?

That's the question asked in the press release for the revised second edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English, published today in the United Kingdom. The new edition includes several common words of South Asian origin, like desi, lehnga, Lollywood, masala, mehndi, tamasha, and of course, Hinglish, defined as 'a blend of Hindi and English, in particular a variety of English used by speakers of Hindi, characterized by frequent use of Hindi vocabulary or constructions'. There are a few surprise entries in the list:

Kitty party noun (chiefly Indian) a regular gathering of a group of women (usually over a meal) in which each member contributes to a central pool and lots are drawn to decide which member will get the entire sum as well as who will host the next gathering.

Bindaas adjective (Indian informal) carefree, fashionable and independent-minded.

You can find the complete list of new words and phrases here.

Alexander McCall Smith on Indian English

'Indian English has got this gorgeous dignity still, and the rhythms of the language and the correctness, the structure is still there,' says the creator of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in the Hindu Literary Review .

The Night of the Gutters

Today is the last day of the month in the Hindu calendar, from tomorrow begins the month of Shravan, during which many Hindus abstain from alcohol and non-vegetarian food. It's a day of indulgence for many people, a last chance to drink yourself silly till you fall into a gutter. That's why it's called Gutteri Amavas, the night of the gutters. Happy drinking!

Luck by fuck

In Mumbai street talk, things don't happen by chance, they happen 'luck by chance'. And now in Bandra, the locals have a new spin on this colloquial expression: over here, things happen 'luck by fuck'.

Swalpa adjust maadi

Libran Lover warns outsiders off this supposedly quintessential Bangalore phrase, which means 'Please adjust a little'.

You are using that phrase because you have either already done something that requires you to apologize to a Bangalorean or you are about to impose on him/her. Don't make it worse for the poor Bangalorean by throwing in that phrase in your pathetic accent. Hearing that phrase coming out of your clumsy mouth would induce Bangaloreans to have reactions ranging from simply smiling at you in their sweet indulgent way to grabbing your head and bashing it against the nearest electricity pole.

You can find the complete rant here.

Benglish

Recently, I've been intrigued by mentions of Benglish in the UK press. It sounds quite unlike anything an Indian would call Benglish or Bonglish: this new variety has been described as a London vernacular that crosses West Indian patois with the Sylheti dialect spoken by East End Bangladeshis. That's about all the information I've found, apart from a review of Tony White's Foxy-T which quotes the following passage, supposedly written in Benglish.

Couple a well fit girl make straight over where Shabbaz and Ranky is wait at the bar. Them two was dress up init and Zafar find him cant take him eye off them behind and how them G-strings show through them white trousers. Them G-string is disappear right up there arse. Easy now Zafar. Shit man them two girl was lean over and say something in him spar ear and touch them arm and laugh init but Zafar just watch them behind like he never seen a girl before... Him no figure how some fit woman like Foxy-T aint make the most of herself is it and just wear them trackie bottom and polo shirt.

Not much Bangla there, innit? If anyone out there has any more information, do let me know.

Wodehouse Babu

Baboo Jabberjee, BA, was a character created by the English humorist F. Anstey for Punch, an Indian law-student in England who has learnt his English from books and speaks in absurdly inflated phrases. (He describes himself as 'saturated to the skin of his teeth in best English masterpieces of immaculate and moderately good prose extracts'). Anstey's Punch sketches were compiled into a book in 1897 and the character also featured in a sequel, A Bayard from Bengal, published in 1902. I've read both the Jabberjee books: they're politically incorrect, of course, but also quite funny, with devastating parodies of Babu English. Apparently, they had a great influence on P. G. Wodehouse's style: I've just discovered this extract from Richard Usborne's Plum Sauce at the Random House site, which shows how Jabberjee's words are sometimes repeated verbatim by Bertie Wooster, 'if perhaps with faint quotation marks in his voice'.

Jabberjee writes: 'As poet Burns remarks with great truthfulness, "Rank is but a penny stamp, and a Man is a man and all that."' This is a pleasant skid on the banana skin of education. Bertie and Jeeves, you remember, get tangled up in this same quotation at a moment of great crisis.

Rem acu tetigisti, non possumus, surgit amari aliquid, ultra vires, mens sana in corpore sano, amende honorable - these are gobbets of education that Jabberjee uses and Jeeves takes over. And (this is sad) we find that it was Jabberjee, and not Bertie, who first made that excellent Shakespeare emendation, only conceivable through the ears, only translatable through the eyes. Jabberjee writes: 'Jessamina inherits, in Hamlet's immortal phraseology, "an eye like Ma's to threaten and command".'

Journalists like David Gardner have claimed to find echoes of P. G. Wodehouse in Indian English, but it seems more likely that the reverse is true: Wodehouse's style owes a debt to Babu bombast.

A Posteriori - II

Nitin Karani's pointed out that an earlier post seems to be missing - I must have deleted it while I was clearing out some unused drafts. Here's an excerpt I found in my notes:

Tariq Rahman, speculating about Akbar’s proficiency in Indian dialects in Language, Ideology and Power, notes that the great Mughal used a Hindustani obscenity on at least one occasion. On Abul Fazl’s testimony, when Akbar was about to kill Adham Khan he exclaimed ‘ay gandu!’ before punching the traitor in the face. (The relevant line from Abul Fazl reads Hazrat ba zaban Hindustani farmudand ke ai kandu, or in translation, ‘My sire said in the Hindustani tongue, O catamite!’)

Mera Song Bhi Sexy

Bollywood's Hall of Shame should have a room reserved for all the veteran Urdu poets who have attempted songs in Hinglish. Your average Bollywood hack can write songs like 'Meri pant bhi sexy' and get away with it, but mixing English with literary Urdu is like pouring Coke on caviar (not to mention that it's downright embarrassing when a Javed Akhtar or a Gulzar tries to get jiggy). You can't but cringe when someone like Majrooh Sultanpuri writes songs for 'youngsters' with lyrics like this:

Main ek disco
Tu ek disco
Duniya hai ek disco
Disco 82! Disco 82!

(I am a disco
You are a disco
The world is a disco
Disco 82! Disco 82!)

Have Hinglish lyrics evolved since 1982, when Majrooh wrote these immortal words? This article in the Indian Express claims they have, and lists some contemporary examples to prove that Hinglish songs these days are 'less corny and more direct'. I'm not convinced: Javed Akhtar's 'It's the time to disco/ Kaun milega kisko' might pass, but 'Burn the dancefloor, O baliye' is the most awkward mix of languages I've heard in a long time.

Feeling Tinglish

Joie De Vivre asks: 'So much babada bibada over this thing called Hinglish... how come no one is mentioning Tinglish?'

Righta? Wronga?

One of the wonderful things about English as it is spoken in south India is the way it acquires an alien music. I once asked a stranger in the street for directions and was told to keep going straiiiighta. It was the most remarkable pronunciation of the word I’d ever heard: the tongue curled back on the t to stretch the diphthong as far as it would go and then moved forward swiftly to tap on the palate. I could tell that it would be a long journey, there would be a bend in the road at some point, but it would curve back eventually and I was to stop right there. Not too abruptly: that last t was softened with a half-vowel, after all.

There’s something about closing a word with a hard consonant that irks the Tamil speaker, so the inflections of his own language are applied to English loanwords: in Chennai, it's quite correctu to say leftu, rightu, and straightu. This linguistic tic is so common, it's become a standard feature in spoofs of South Indian English. So you have advertising slogans that claim 'Eastu, Westu, Northu, Southu, Vasthu bestu', and joke translations from the Tamil that read like this:

Moonu broughtu
tied it on the cotu
cloudu broughtu
put it on the bedu

(Sathya Sankaran, Corrupted Mind, June 30, 2005)

Usage of this kind is highly informal, of course, so there's no standard way of rendering the half-vowel. One person may write tightu, another tighta. Tight-aa? on the other hand, is how you might ask a friend if he's had too much to drink: the aa tag is a separate device altogether that conveys emphasis or interrogation. (A Tamil De Niro, if such a thing existed, would stand in front of the mirror and say 'You're talking to who? I-aa?', to which the reflection would doubtless reply 'Amaa! You-e!'). I'm sure a native speaker could point out many more variations and uses of the vowel tag: this blog goes so far as to suggest, tongue in cheek, that you can get by in Chennai without any Tamil, 'all you need to survive is to put an "A" after an English word'.

example: Yogu sits in Chennai auto.

Yogu: Po!
Rajnikant Autowala: Aiyyo!!! Po whereA!?!?!
Yogu: Amma!!! Po Lefta...then Righta!!!
Rajnikant Autowala: Aha...OK ma...understanda.

Destination Reacheda.

Rajnikant Autowala: Pathu ruppes saar...
Yogu: Pathu rupees ma!?!?! Tambee!!! Vermina!!! Mongrela!!! Appa Kundee!!! Chenee rida BIG fareA!?!?! shiva shiva...
Rajnikant Autowala: Sunday ma! Shiva temble yextra farea!!!

(Yogustus Caesar, GetAFix, 17 Oct, 2004)

Chico Marx in a mundu? Well, not quite. Unlike the Marx Brothers' mock-Italian, this brand of Instant Tamlish is used even when no parody is intended. You'll find it in internet forums frequented by Tamilians, where people tend to write as they speak. Here, the vowel tags merely reproduce the inflections of the spoken language. Some random examples from the TFM and Sysindia forums:

Romba correctu!

Original-a illa duplicate-aa?

Iyya naga sonna sonathu than correctu mathavanga yellam corruptu.

Anyway, ippa noveloda plot tighta irukku.

It sounds like a combo of maalkouns + chandrakouns, correctaa ?

Telugu films are stepsu, dancu & fightu. That's all.

Yes, that's about it. I'm going to watch TV now, see if I can catch Righta? Wronga? on the Tamil channel.

A Tikkus to the Beskop

Jamyang Norbu, author of The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes has a five-part essay in the Times of Tibet which attempts to refute propaganda myths about the Chinese 'modernization' of the Tibetan language. In response to the claim that the language lacked a scientific vocabulary prior to Chinese intervention, Norbu methodically lists every neologism adopted in the early 20th century, demonstrating that the Tibetans had names for modern inventions like electricity, radio, photography and the airplane long before the occupation of their homeland. In the process, he creates an unusual portrait of a society and a language adapting to modern times.

It's a long essay with many interesting historical asides, so I won't try to summarize it here. However, one of the strands in Norbu's argument is worth mentioning on this blog, because it deals with hybridity. The Tibet he portrays is neither a fairy-tale Shangri La nor the insular, monk-ridden society depicted in Chinese propaganda: though geographically isolated, the country had many contacts with the outer world through Muslim mercantile communities and encounters with Anglo-Indian society. Not surprisingly, the Tibetan language had acquired many loanwords from English and Hindustani. Tibetans called the telegraph tar from the Hindi for wire, a motorcar was a mota or gari, from gaadi, flashlights were known as bijili after the Hindi word for electricity, and the postal service was called dak. Borrowed words like these were in common use throughout the country, while in Lhasa you could smoke a shik-ray (cigarette), chew gig-chiri (chewing gum), or buy a tikkus (ticket) to the beskop (bioscope, cinema) to watch the movies of Charlie Chumping. (Hollywood movies and Western-style dancing were popular among the elite - we're informed in an aside that the foxtrot had been introduced to Lhasa, and the 'Palais Glide' and 'Boomps-a-Daisy' too had their moments in the Holy City).

With all these new products flowing into Tibet, such commercial terms as 'dozen' (Tib. darzen), as well as the concept of commercial brand names, which Tibetans termed lemba from the English 'number', entered the popular vocabulary. So in cigarettes you had amo-lemba or Camel brand and cheaper Indian brands, tadri lemba , Battle Axe brand, and sashu lemba, Lantern brand. Fabrics, sewing thread, soap etc, also came in a variety of brand names...

The term lemba was also used to designate certain famous ladies, especially amongst the Lhasa demimonde. Most well known, in this context, were three female vocalists of the nangma musical ensembles of Lhasa : shimi lemba (cat brand), porok lemba (crow brand) and naptu lemba (snot brand). Another lady of easy virtue who is said to have worn Western style shoes ( jurta, from the Hindi juta) instead of the traditional Tibetan boot lham, was called jurta lemba. One lemba lady (who shall remain nameless) moved to Darjeeling in the forties and, as Miss Lily, is said to have contributed to the War effort by entertaining American GIs on leave in that hill resort.

Governments everywhere tend to frown upon these illicit encounters between languages. The Chinese went further: under Communist occupation, the Tibetan language was 'modernized' by the creation of a new politically correct vocabulary which discarded foreign loanwords and commonly used colloquialisms in favour of loan-translations from the Chinese coined by collaborators and anonymous apparatchiks. (Some striking parallels here to the official Sanskritized Hindi propagated by the Indian government around the same time). Later during the Cultural Revolution, the Tibetan language itself came under attack and its teaching was banned in many parts of the country. Norbu notes that 'Tibetans in Tibet now use a large percentage of Chinese terms in their everyday speech, in much the same way that citizens of former Soviet satellite states were compelled to use Russian'. The home language now differs greatly from the variety used in exile: Tibetans in India continue to adopt words like the 'decidedly peculiar' barabaji (lunch), derived from the Hindi for 'twelve o'clock'.

Visible Chaddi Line

ABCD normally stands for American Born Confused Desi, but this month's Time Out Mumbai provides an alternative Marathi expansion of the acronym.

ABCD

Acronym used by senior Maharashtrian women to describe women in low-slung jeans: Aga Bai Chaddi Diste. Example: I'm sure she's the one who plays that loud disco-shisko when I'm doing pooja in the morning. She's the only ABCD in the society.

Slang Sighting: One-Tharah Types

Bangalore slang, mixing Kannada and English. One tharah types are one of a kind, eccentric, idiosyncratic, 'like that only'.

Cosmopolitan people, you think? Yeah, they're a mixed bag. Different, one-tharah types. Not so hard-and-fast. A chill crowd, like. Doing ultra-cool things chumma, simply, for no reason other than to do it. (Lavanya Sankaran, The Red Carpet)

Sankaran has a good ear for Bangalore talk, and as she mentions in this interview, her publishers have been 'gracious enough to let her chumma and one-tharah be without qualifiers'. You can read an excerpt from the book here.

Coarse jocosity catches the crowd

Manmohan Singh, distinguished economist, politician, Prime Minister... and now, stand-up comedian?

Dr Singh, who received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater Oxford University, had an audience of professors and students in splits when he said that Indians had experimented with the Queen's English, which is now 'just another Indian language'.

The choice of prepositions may not always be the Queen's language and they might occasionally split the infinitive and drop an article here and add an extra one there, the Prime Minister said, deliberately pronouncing 'split' as 'saplit'.

(The Tribune, 9 July, 2005)

Kidnap Aunties and other kin

'Kidnap Aunty' is what the Indian media is calling a conspirator in the Vaibhav Agarwal ransom case. "The mess-up", comments Bachi Karkaria, "endorses my theory that 'Aunty' suffers from a permanent bad-hair day, unlike the always coiffed 'Aunt'."

Only colonial hangovers such as the Parsis and some Christian communities have 'Aunts'; all the rest only have 'Aunties'. But it's not that simple. Only the old-money Dadysetts or DaCunhas had an 'Aunt Lily'. In the wealth-tax bracket below, she became 'Aunty Lily'. However, on the other side of the Privilege Line, the relationship also switches places and gets downsized as 'Lily Aunty'...This prefix-suffix divide is like caste and monsoon rivers, absolute and non-crossable. (Bachi Karkaria, Never, ever call me Aunty again, Sunday Times of India, July 10, 2005)

The article isn't online yet, but meanwhile here's a link to Bachi's column.

Thulp it all I say!

The ever excellent Double-Tongued Word Wrester examines thulp, a slang word that must be part of every IIT-M guy's vocabulary. I've heard it used most often to describe the act of consuming vast quantities of food: for some reason I always associate it with eating thair sadam with the hands. Need I add that this usage is almost exclusively South Indian?

Thalpu : Eat rather, Gobble. eg. 'Thalp it all I say !' is famous when you go to free Luncheon in a star hotel. (Colloquial Kannada)

Wheatish Girl Seeks Alliance

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary covers the vocabulary of Indian matrimonial advertisements - including a word that is usually reserved for household pets.

Domesticated

Not used in the 'When were dogs domesticated?' sense, domesticated is a term applied in particular to prospective brides that indicates a good sense for maintaining a home and cooking good food for her prospective husband.

It's a brief note, hardly exhaustive (no 'innocent divorcees', no 'cosmopolitans', no 'clean-shaven Khatri boys'), but still worth a read.

Surreal Moments in Parliamentary History

Shri S.C. Malhotra, Chief Parliamentary Reporter, and Shri P. Kulasekharan, Supervisory Sr. Parliamentary Reporter, have unenviable jobs: according to the Lok Sabha website, they are 'officers responsible for supply of the information for Wit and Humour, Poetry and Couplets'. They take their work seriously, trawling through transcripts of parliamentary proceedings for the anecdotes compiled on the site.

TASTE OF PUDDING IS IN EATING

During the question hour on 16.12.2004, on the subject of filling up of top posts in public sector undertakings, hon. Member Shri Gurudas Dasgupta put a supplementary to the hon. Minister of Heavy Industries, Shri Sontosh Mohan Dev as follows:

"Taste of the pudding is in the eating. There is always a gap between promise and performance. I hope it will not be so in this case…"

To this, Shri Sontosh Mohan Dev quipped:

"Sir, I am a diabetic patient. I cannot eat pudding!", and the whole House burst into laughter.

I guess you had to be there. Quite wisely, our parliamentarians seem to prefer Poetry & Couplets over Wit & Humour, quoting Sanskrit shlokas, Urdu shairi and Hindi poetry. The rare instances in which English verse is cited are worth noting. Let the record show that on 26th April, 2001, the Hon. Member of Parliament Shri Anadi Sahu recited the following rhyme during a debate on farmers' problems in the Sixth Session of the Thirteenth Lok Sabha.

..Old McDonald had a farm
Yeah, Yeah, ho
A quack, quack here
A quack, quack there
A quach, quack everywhere

Old McDonald had a farm
Yeah, Yeah, ho
A mow, mow here
A mow, mow there
A mow, mow everywhere

Junoon Tamil

The variety of Tamil spoken on dubbed television shows, named after the serial Junoon which used to air on Doordarshan's Metro channel. Typically, the original Hindi dialogue is translated by hacks who tend to translate idioms literally. The exigencies of dubbing impose awkward constructions, resulting in a language which bears little resemblance to colloquial Tamil. The term also seems to be used loosely to describe any artificial Tamil, whether it's advertising copy translated from another language, the Tamil songs of North Indian singers like Udit Narayan and Sukhvinder Singh, or the speech of those who 'think in Hindi or English and speak in Tamil'.

As teenagers, our lives had revolved around Doordarshan. This was an institution that had even spawned an atrocious new version of Tamil that was dubbed 'Junoon Tamil;' it went on to become the biggest joke in the city in the mid-nineties. It so happened that the serial Junoon was dubbed in Tamil. Both the translation -- it was literal, with no regard for grammar or local idioms -- and the pronunciation were atrocious. (Hemanth Kumar, Beware: Friendly Auto Driver Ahead, rediff.com)

Then there's the Hindi of dubbed American sitcoms and children's programmes, which is quite unlike spoken Hindi, or even the anglicized Hindi of magazines like Stardust (their Hindi edition was famous for translated idioms like 'billi tokri se nikal chuki hai'). The language here is more like an artificially constructed Hinglish in which all the troublesome English words are left untranslated. Well, for instance, is one of those words for which there is no exact Hindi equivalent, so it's left untouched. Pronounced vail in dubbese, it pops up in every second line. 'Vail, main aa gaya', says Dad as he enters the room. 'Vail, tum phir laut sakte ho' replies Mom. Canned laughter.